Terrible short list revealed for Canada's Polaris Music Prize

Tegan and Sara, pictured performing at Staples Center in 2012, are among the nominees for Canada's Polaris Music Prize announced Tuesday.

Tegan and Sara, pictured performing at Staples Center in 2012, are among the nominees for Canada's Polaris Music Prize announced Tuesday. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Mikael Wood

Canada's Polaris Music Prize is putting the "white" in the Great White North.

Nominees for this year's award -- which seeks to recognize "creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music," according to a statement -- were announced early Tuesday, and Pop & Hiss is here to tell you that it's a truly horrifying collection, with more indie rock than you can shake an ice-encrusted maple leaf at.

Assembled by an "independent jury of over 200 music journalists, broadcasters and music bloggers from across Canada," the short list includes albums by -- deep breath here -- Metric, METZ, Purity Ring, Colin Stetson, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Whitehorse, Young Galaxy and Tegan and Sara.

METZ's noisy self-titled debut punches up fond memories of Big Black and Shellac; Tegan and Sara's "Heartthrob" finds that twin-sister duo working at a higher level of popcraft than ever before. And the muckraking cranks in Godspeed always have something provocative to say, even if their music remains a bit of a chore to get through.

But on a list of 10 albums -- one laughably described as "moody and exciting" by Polaris founder Steve Jordan -- can there really be room for only two releases from outside the indie-rock hothouse? (Those would be Zaki Ibrahim's "Every Opposite" and "Nation II Nation" by A Tribe Called Red.)

Where's the country music? Where's the R&B? And perhaps most importantly, where's Justin Bieber?

The Polaris Music Prize -- which Feist won last year with her album "Metals" -- is to be handed out Sept. 23 at a ceremony in Toronto. For the first time ever, "a limited number of public balcony seat tickets" will be offered to average Joes for $50, organizers said. Count us out.